A Complete A-Z of Stablecoins

Stablecoins have proliferated this year, so much so that it’s been hard to keep track of them all. In a bid to remedy that, news.Bitcoin.com has compiled a list of all stablecoins that are currently tradable – plus several others that are on their way. This is the ultimate A-Z of stablecoins. For now, at least.

B is for Basis

Basis, formerly known as Basecoin, is the hottest new stablecoin in town. It’s attracted investment from all the usual crypto bigshots, and intends to adhere to the US dollar via an algorithmically adjusted supply. This essentially means that when demand rises, more Basis will be created, and when it’s falling, more will be bought back. This expanding and contracting supply ought to help Basis maintain its peg.

B is for Bitusd

Bitusd is an old stablecoin now, and it’s starting to wobble. The bulk of its trade occurs on the Bitshares exchange where it was designed to operate, though it’s also available on Openledger DEX. While it would be stretching the truth to call Bitusd a ‘stable’ stablecoin these days, it still functions. Just.

C is for Carbon

Carbon uses an algorithmically adjusted supply based on demand to maintain parity with the US dollar, a bit like Basis. Will it work? We’ll have to wait and see.

C is for CK USD

Little is known about CK USD, whose team are as mysterious as the workings of its stablecoin. Coinmarketcap has no data regarding its total circulating supply, but reports a staggering 24-hour volume of $137 million on BCEX and Allcoin. Whatever CK USD is, it seems to work.

D is for Dai

Dai, created using the Maker Dao, has a market cap 1/20th the size of Tether’s, but it’s a stablecoin on the up, while adhering closely to its obligatory dollar peg. What Dai lacks in market cap it makes up for in transparency. While there are concerns over the possibility of Dai’s collateral-based Ethereum assets being inadequate for maintaining the dollar peg during extreme market volatility, the stablecoin has worked faithfully so far.

H is for Havven

Havven has two stablecoins: nusd and eusd, the latter an Ethereum-based USD-pegged coin, while the n in the former stands for nomins, Havven’s unit of account. Havven’s stablecoins are primarily for use within its own ecosystem, so don’t expect to see this pair replacing Tether anytime soon, though there is an EOS version of nusd in the works.

K is for Kowala

Kowala (KUSD) has yet to be unleashed, but big things are expected of this eagerly anticipated token. A good stablecoin is like a good immune system: you only appreciate the job it was doing when it fails. The measure of any good stablecoin’s success is its ability to cling, limpet-like, to the US dollar through thick and thin.

N is for Nubits

Nubits is a failed stablecoin, and is included here as an example of what can happen when stablecoins go wrong. It’s currently trading on Upbit and Bittrex for $0.15. Despite miserably failing to keep its US dollar peg, which it abandoned sometime around January, Nubits is still performing better than most of this year’s ICO tokens.

R is for Rockz

Billed as “the world’s most bulletproof cryptocurrency”, Rockz is a Swiss stablecoin that’s launching soon. Unusually, it’s entering the world via an ICO. Rockz may not promise the moon, but if its token can remain rock solid with the Swiss franc it’s backed by, it’ll have done its job.

Rockz claims to outperform other stablecoins.

S is for Stably

All the cool kids (mostly VC funds) are investing in stablecoins right now. Stably raised $500,000 earlier this year ahead of its launch on the Ethereum and Stellar blockchains. Each USD-pegged Stably coin will be backed by a corresponding cash reserve.

S is for Steem Dollars

Dan Larimer is hailed by his acolytes as a visionary. The only trouble is that once he’s gotten cold feet and moved on to better things, the projects he’s left behind have a tendency to falter. Like Bitusd, Steem Dollars only resemble a US dollar in the vaguest possible sense these days. Someone needs to invent a term for a coin that’s no longer technically a stablecoin. Unstablecoin? Fablecoin? Yes, let’s go with fablecoin: a token whose promise of parity with the US dollar proves to be nothing more than fabulous fiction.

T is for Tether

Available on the Omni blockchain and also as an ERC20 token, Tether is the daddy of stablecoins. Supposedly backed by real USD deposits, the stablecoin maintains pretty close parity with its $1 peg. While a controversial stablecoin, largely on account of its creators’ failure to conduct a full financial audit, Tether’s $2.8 billion market cap makes it bigger than all but seven cryptocurrencies. But is it too big to fail? For now, at least, Tether seems to be working, even if its dollar peg is maintained more out of belief than anything.

T is for Trueusd

Trust Token’s Trueusd is backed by collateralized USD assets held in escrow accounts. In that respect, Trueusd’s model is similar to Tether, but with greater transparency. With Binance, Bittrex, and India’s Zebpay all adopting Trueusd, this stablecoin’s star is in the ascendancy.

U is for USD-C

Circle is reportedly working on its own stablecoin, which should first see life on Poloniex exchange, now under the stewardship of Circle. Little is known about USD-C, as the stablecoin has been named, but it will operate on the Ethereum network and will naturally be pegged to the US dollar.

U is for Usdvault

As we explained earlier this week, Usdvault is collateralized with “gold bullion that’s professed to be housed in Swiss vaults. The Vault creators claim the stable coin will be based off a 1:1 USD price ratio, but the asset’s 1:1 value is essentially backed by the precious metals located in Switzerland”.

Over a long enough timeframe, most of these stablecoins, like most cryptocurrencies in general, are probably destined for failure. For now, at least, those that are tradable (with the exception of Nubits), seem to work, give or take. As the saying goes, “Any port in a storm”, and in capricious crypto markets, stablecoins have been welcomed by all who’ve sought refuge in them.

Did we miss out any stablecoins? Let us know in the comments section below.

Since the project launched a little over six months ago, Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) has roughly $5.9 million or 558 BTC… read more.

Kai Sedgwick

Kai's been manipulating words for a living since 2009 and bought his first bitcoin at $12. It's long gone. He's previously written whitepapers for blockchain startups and is especially interested in P2P exchanges and DNMs.

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